[gobolinux-devel] env vars in /etc/zprofile instead of zshrc

[Hisham]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 9:23 PM, Jonatan Liljedahl <lijon at kymatica.com> wrote:
>
> Hisham wrote:
>  > On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 8:44 PM, Jonatan Liljedahl <lijon at kymatica.com> wrote:
>  >>  At least mine *does* read zprofile in interactive shells: I put echo
>  >>  lines at the end of my .zshrc and .zprofile and when I now launch an
>  >>  xterm -ls I get this:
>  >>
>  >>  reading .zprofile
>  >>  reading .zshrc
>  >>  lijon at Kymatix ~]
>  >
>  > Yes, but -ls turn on "login shell", so that's why .zprofile was read, isn't it?
>
>  Yes, of course. I now see the confusion, what I was arguing against was
>  the idea that interactive login shells didn't read zprofile, but perhaps
>  nobody was saying this... :)
>
>  An interactive non-login shell wouldn't read zprofile, that's right. But
>  I'm having a hard time seeing why you would need environment variables
>  without beeing logged in. And how often do you use an interactive
>  non-login shell that is not started from another login shell, and need
>  the env variables? "Display manager straight into X" (without login) is
>  not something you would want, since the env variables wouldn't be there
>  and many things wouldn't work. regardless if they are set in zprofile or
>  zshrc. (zshrc is *not* always read, only on interactive shells, which a
>  display manager login shell is not.
>
>  This thread is starting to get ridiculous.. :)

No, this thread is not ridiculous -- esac is! :)

Getting this kind of shell stuff 100% right is complicated business
and threads like this are valuable because each participant brings
different aspects of knowledge to the table.

>  All I want is that login
>  shells should have the proper env vars set, regardless of whether the
>  shell is interactive (text prompt) or not.

It's fair. I too find it hard to imagine a shell running that didn't
have any (grand^n for n >= 0)-parent process that was a login shell.

My suggestion: how about this? (pseudo-shell ahead: )

zprofile:
export ZPROFILE_SET=1
# export PATH and other env vars...

zshrc:
if [ ! "$ZPROFILE_SET" = "1" ]
then
   source zprofile
fi
# other interactive shell stuff: prompt style, completion, etc.

I think this should make everyone happy, no?

-- Hisham